The Danger [antikvár]

Introduction Alessia Cenci was twenty-three. She had been with the kidnappers for fwe weeks, three days and ten hours — and she had never been closer to death than now. When one of the best women jockeys in the world is kidnapped, Andrew Douglas is called to get her back alive. If he makes one mistake, Alessia Cenci could be dead. But then there are other kidnappings - all in the horse-racing world - and Douglas is asked to work on them too. Is the same man responsible? If so, Douglas and his friends must stop him. Dick Francis was born in 1920 in South Wales. He can't remember learning to ride: for him it was as easy as learning to walk. He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, flying both bombers and fighters. He became a professional rider in 1948. For ten years, he was one of Britain's top jockeys. He nearly won Britain's greatest race, the Grand National, but his horse fell fifty metres from the finish. When he left the sport in 1957, he wrote about horse-racing for the newspapers. He wrote his first book, the story of his life, in the same year. Then he began to write crime stories - always connected with horses and horse-racing. The first of these, Dead Cert (1962), was a success and he has written over thirty books since then - about one a year. Almost all of them have been bestsellers. He has won prizes both in America and Britain for his books.